*

Blue Origin aims to compete more equally with SpaceX

*

Rocket's first-stage booster achieves safe return landing

at sea

*

Launch marks New Glenn's second flight

*

Rocket deploys two NASA satellites bound for Mars

(Adds details about booster's return landing, CEO comment,

goals of mission; Viasat ( VSAT ) test succeeds; paragraphs 4, 6, 11, 14)

By Steve Gorman, Joey Roulette and Joe Skipper

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, Nov 13 (Reuters) - The giant

New Glenn rocket from billionaire Jeff Bezos' space company Blue

Origin launched from Florida on its debut mission for paying

customers on Thursday, sending two NASA satellites toward Mars

and nailing the return landing of its reusable booster for the

first time.

The powerful two-stage rocket's first flight since its inaugural

launch in January and the successful booster landing at sea

represented key milestones for Blue Origin in its quest to

compete on a more equal footing with Elon Musk's SpaceX, the

world's leading rocket-launch service.

A live Blue Origin webcast showed the rocket ascending from its

launch tower through clear afternoon skies in a thunder of

flames and billowing clouds of vapor moments after its seven

BE-4 liquid-fueled engines roared to life. The launch followed

several days of delays due to cloudy skies and a geomagnetic

storm.

Some 10 minutes after liftoff, the 17-story-tall New Glenn

first-stage booster made a return landing on the deck of a

barge, named Jacklyn in honor of Bezos' mother, floating in the

Atlantic, achieving for Blue Origin an important feat in

reusability that was pioneered by SpaceX. The first attempt at

such a landing in January failed.

With Thursday's launch, NASA's twin EscaPADE spacecraft became

the first science payload that Blue Origin has delivered to

space for NASA or any customer.

"We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud

of the team," Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, said in a

statement.

Musk acknowledged Blue Origin's accomplishment, posting on

his social platform X: "Congratulations @JeffBezos and the

@BlueOrigin team!"

Cheers erupted in Blue Origin's Rocket Park mission control

center at Cape Canaveral as video showed the landing of the

booster, dubbed "Never Tell Me the Odds" in a reference to a

line spoken by "Star Wars" hero Han Solo in the film "The Empire

Strikes Back."

About 20 minutes later, mission control confirmed that New

Glenn's upper stage had achieved its primary mission -

deployment of the EscaPADE spacecraft into outer space to embark

on a 22-month voyage to Mars.

BLUE AND GOLD

The dual spacecraft, dubbed Blue and Gold, are due to reach

Mars in 2027 and enter synchronized elliptical orbits for an

11-month study of the planet's space weather environment.

Instruments aboard the satellites will analyze how solar winds -

the fluctuating stream of high-energy charged particles from the

sun - interact with the relatively weak Martian magnetic field

and how that interaction has contributed to depletion of the

thin Martian atmosphere. The findings will help explain why

Mars, once warmer and wetter, became a desert planet, and the

way that solar radiation affects the Martian surface.

EscaPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and

Dynamics Explorers, was originally slated for launch in October

2024, but was delayed by setbacks in development of the New

Glenn rocket.

The Blue and Gold satellites were built for NASA by

California-based aerospace company Rocket Lab, with instruments

supplied by the University of California, Berkeley.

The rocket also carried a secondary payload from the satellite

company Viasat ( VSAT ) that remained attached to its upper

stage for a technical demonstration of an in-space relay of

telemetry data above Earth. Blue Origin said the test was a

success.

When the rocket made its debut flight in January, it carried

Blue Origin's own payload to space, a prototype for its

maneuverable Blue Ring spacecraft that the company is developing

for the Pentagon and commercial customers.

Blue Origin, founded by Bezos in 2000, has until recently

been known mainly for a space tourism business that flies

wealthy passengers to the edge of space in its suborbital New

Shepard rocketship. The single-stage reusable vehicle also has

carried more than 200 research experiments inside its capsule.

PLAYING CATCH-UP WITH SPACEX

Blue Origin has spent billions of dollars developing New

Glenn, a heavy-lift-class rocket designed to become the

company's workhorse vehicle for flying people and cargo into

orbit.

Named for John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, the

spacecraft produces two times more thrust at liftoff than

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and about the same as SpaceX's Falcon

Heavy vehicle, while offering more cargo room than its rivals.

NASA has spent roughly $55 million for the EscaPADE mission

- a modest price tag relative to the agency's

multibillion-dollar space programs - and has paid Blue Origin

$18 million for the New Glenn flight, federal procurement data

showed.

Blue Origin also supplies engines for other companies'

rockets, including United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur, and

has been working on a crewed moon lander for NASA's Artemis

lunar exploration program, as well as a space station in

collaboration with other entities.

Blue Origin has far to go to catch up with SpaceX, which has

launched its Falcon rockets on nearly 280 missions during the

past two years, most of them serving its own Starlink satellite

business.

Musk's company also is developing its next-generation

Starship rocket, a stainless steel behemoth designed to be fully

reusable and serve an array of missions including flights to the

moon and Mars, and expanding SpaceX's Starlink satellite

network.